A report in The Indian Express in April 2012 concerning government apprehension about army movements[5] was criticised in OPEN by the then editorial chairman of Outlook, Vinod Mehta, in an interview with Hartosh Singh Bal. Mehta called the story a mistake and a "plant". In May 2012, the Express sent a legal notice to Open asking for an apology, for the contentious story to be removed from the online edition, for OPEN to pay ₹ 500 crores to the Express, and for the journalists who wrote the contentious Express story.[6][7]

In November 2013, Hartosh Singh Bal, who was political editor of OPEN, was sacked.[8] The then editor, Manu Joseph, said that the magazine's proprietor, Sanjiv Goenka, thought that Bal's writings and appearances on television were resulting in him "making a lot of ... political enemies."[9] Joseph himself resigned when P. R. Ramesh became managing editor.[9][10][11]

Citing several instances of "press censorship", including the controversial firing of Hartosh Singh Bal, a July 2014 editorial in the New York Times commented that:

Press censorship seems to be back with a vengeance in India, this time imposed not by direct government fiat but by powerful private owners and politicians.[12]

In 2014, after Bal, Joseph, and Rahul Pandit had left, the magazine issued a clarification and expressed regret for the Mehta column. Mehta, Bal and Joseph then complained that the new editorial team of OPEN had violated journalistic norms because they had not been contacted before the issue of the clarification and that there was no way for OPEN to make the claims it was making in its clarification.[11][13][14]

As of 2017[update], the editor is S. Prasannarajan[15] and Ashok Bindra is the chief executive and publisher.[16]

Neeraja Chawla is the current CEO of Open Media Network. She joined in 2018.